Baked food products formed in mass production processes can be transferred from the baking ovens to packaging stations via conveyors. In one such process, baked biscuit products (e.g., biscuits, cookies, crackers, cakes, etc.) are baked in an oven and then transported or moved to one of a series of independent conveyor lanes.
FIG. 1 presents an example layout of a system 10 for such a process. As shown in FIG. 1, an output of the oven 20 leads to a series of multiple conveyors 40n, each of which conveyors 40n can have multiple lanes. Each of the independent conveyors 40n leads to a corresponding dedicated packaging machine 50n. Thus, in operation, the independent conveyors 40n receive biscuits from the oven 20, and direct a single file stream of biscuits in the lanes to a corresponding packaging machine 50n. 
Such an arrangement has several shortcomings. For example, if one packaging machine is inoperable, even for a brief period of time, all of the lanes on the conveyor dedicated to that machine will stop. This can result in inefficiencies because otherwise operable conveyors will go unused. Further, because each packaging machine utilizes its own separate conveyor, the layout for such an arrangement takes up a significant amount of space. For example, the arrangement of FIG. 1 can occupy 950 m2 Of more of floor space in a packaging facility.
Additionally, because the layout of FIG. 1 includes many conveyors spaced over a large area, each conveyor will require its own set of manual workers to attend to issues that arise on the production line. For instance, workers will need to tend to matters such as inspecting products, removing broken or improperly placed products, and addressing equipment breakdowns. Thus, the worker headcount to operate this system can be significantly high, which can make the process expensive.
For at least these reasons, multi-conveyor packaging systems such as those depicted in FIG. 1 can be can be inconvenient, inefficient, and expensive to operate.